Democracies have always had a knowledge problem, or at least an ignorance problem. Elites in ancient Athens complained about the ignorance of the hoi polloi, which means “the many”, and wondered whether it makes sense to entrust illiterate farmers and workmen with weighty decisions about war, legislation and justice in the courts, where there were no judges or lawyers. Accusers and defendants had to plead their own case before a jury made up of hundreds of Athenian men, who passed verdicts on grave matters like the death of Socrates without any legal experts to guide or check them. In 16th-century Florence, Machiavelli wondered whether the “multitude” can ever be wiser than a prince or a few well-connected “gentlemen”. He decided that it most definitely can, and that overall chances of making good decisions are much better in broad-based popular governments than in aristocracies or monarchies.
But that doesn’t mean the people are always right, or even that there’s something like popular “common sense” that usually reigns in republics. Far from it. Having made the case that popular government is better than the alternatives, Machiavelli describes the numerous shortfalls of wisdom to which the popolo are prone. For one thing, the “generality of people” often place too much trust in what leaders tell them. For another, since most of us think more about our present comforts and discomforts than about the future, we can be very bad at judging “great” questions – about decisions to go to war, for example, or when to enter or leave confederations, or whether to change basic laws.
When liberal democracies began to flower in the 18th and 19th centuries, the problem of citizen ignorance quickly sprang to the fore. The English philosopher John Stuart Mill, a man of very progressive views on gender equality and other matters, proposed that the votes of citizens who displayed “individual mental superiority” – women as well as men – should have more weight than the inferior ones. Mill didn’t elaborate on how this superiority might be measured. But today you find highly trained academics who are intrigued by the idea that people with a better education should have a superior share of voting power, and a greater right to take part in referenda and similar public decisions.
If I reflect on my own reactions to various Covid-19 measures, I have to admit that I share the Athenians’ doubts about the wisdom of the hoi polloi, chiefly because I am one of them and most definitely lack the knowledge I feel I’d need to make sound judgements about key policies. I have no sympathy at all with Mill’s argument, since my several higher degrees and long experience of teaching and writing about philosophy, politics and history make me none the wiser about the nature of viruses, or about whether more masks or lockdowns or vaccinations will finally bring them under control. And since – as an educated yet ignorant citizen of nowhere in particular – I now find myself inclined to go along with whatever the government I live under says, I’m curious about whether my passivity makes any sense at all
My dilemma is that while I’m keenly aware of my own ignorance in Covid-related and many, many other matters, I also agree with Machiavelli and my friends who say that we should be wary of putting too much faith in leaders and their experts. Ever since Plato set out the ideal of philosopher kings and queens, across the centuries you find people who have been attracted to some sort of government that gives a large share of power to educated elites. These governments are sometimes called epistocracies, from the Greek words epistēmē (knowledge) and kratos (rule or power).
The champions of epistocracy want to place people who have specialized kinds of knowledge into positions of high authority, not asking them to undergo the rigours of a popular vote or to persuade the public that they are trustworthy characters. They soar to power in the state by virtue of their certificates, reputations and good relations with the people who appoint them. My old college friend Daniel Bell, who’s lived for many years in China and draws on Confucian political ideas, has argued that carefully selected elites should occupy the highest echelons of government, and be responsible for selecting new personnel. Would-be leaders wouldn’t have to curry favour with voters, and we wouldn’t all be subjected to the entertaining but demeaning, fake news-spreading spectacle of contemporary election campaigns. In France until 2021, many senior officials could only attain posts if they possessed a diploma from the ENA, the École nationale d’administration, which accepted a tiny handful of students each year after testing their cleverness, diligence and talents for saying the right thing at the right time.
We all rely on other people’s knowledge in private and public life. This is most obvious when it comes to practical know-how, which the Greeks called technē, and specialised knowledge that one can only acquire through years of concentrated training. The more complex our world gets, the more we all look to specialists or highly educated generalists to filter and process information for us, and to help citizens and elected officials decide how to act on it. The growing need we have for these experts makes it all the more disappointing when they behave like ordinary mortals instead of godlike custodians of the common weal. Some of them – or so it’s natural to suspect in our polarised times – have partisan leanings and skew whatever they know to help their friends and hurt their enemies. Others, say their critics, seem to care little about helping anyone or anything but their own reputation. They compete among themselves, striving to prove that their theory or model of climate change or disease or wealth creation must be the best one, filtering out evidence and logic that might weaken their case.
These hazards were highlighted during the early months of the Covid pandemic in a country famous for its moderation and consensus-seeking ways. Ten days before my February 2020 trip to the UK, I went to a conference in Sweden on nationalism and liberalism. Not long afterwards, the world learned that the Swedish constitution gives medical and other experts a great deal of power 102 Adventures in Democracy to decide government policies in their field, with very little accountability to the public. For three months Sweden’s chief medical experts advised people to relax and ride out the spreading virus without a lockdown. Even as death rates soared, defenders of the epistocratic element in Sweden’s democracy thought it safer to entrust such important issues to scientists than to expose them to democratic ignorance
One of their most powerful critics was Gina Gustavsson, the scholar who’d organized the conference I attended. She did not claim to be a better epidemiologist than the authors of the no-lockdown policy. She did say that certain Swedish experts claimed to know more about the uselessness of restrictions than their counterparts in other countries, that they were more confident than anyone ought to be when it was too soon to have clear evidence – and the evidence they did show was one-sided and, as time went on, misleading. Soon enough, some Swedish experts and policy-makers admitted that they’d been wrong and that many lives might have been saved with a less laissez-faire policy.
This tells me that my distrustful friends are right to warn citizens against sleepwalking into whatever rules your government sets, even in emergency situations. Indeed, questions are needed all the more in emergencies, since this is when leaders find it easiest to manipulate information and expand their own powers by leaps and bounds, as Viktor Orbán and others tried to do. Because so few experts are altogether above personal ambition, partisan tribalism and the wish to be seen as right, as soon as they have a large share of responsibility for making and implementing policies you soon see why robust epistocracy is an unsafe way to go in democracies.
Since for the most part experts aren’t elected, it is hard to hold them accountable to the populace who are asked to trust their advice. And it’s natural – and good for democracy – for people to suspect that some super-knowing elites care more about their reputation or partisan point-scoring than about the people whose lives and welfare depend on their wisdom. Which is, I hope it’s needless to say, no excuse for the vicious attacks from anti-vaxers and lockdown sceptics that some scientific advisers endured during the pandemic. Hard questions and peaceful protests are democracy’s way.
Excerpted with permission from Adventures in Democracy: The Turbulent World of People Power, Erica Benner, Allen Lane.